The ongoing debate about how to preserve farmland along with the economic base and food resources that agriculture creates for this county, as well as the nation, is healthy and necessary. However, I feel that the debate needs to occur within a much larger framework.

About 10,000 years ago Earth's climate lurched from bitter Ice Age conditions to the much balmier time in which we live today. We don't fully understand what caused that great climate shift, but we know it was near the time of that great temperature transition that people started to farm. And one of the crops people in some parts of the world learned to tend was wheat.

America is blessed with the strongest and most capable military in the world. Our service members execute challenging missions in the most complex environment on earth. They leave the military with skills that our economy needs to compete. It is our responsibility to take care of them when they return. Unfortunately, upon returning home, many of our veterans discover that even though they have the training to perform a wide variety of jobs, the system often times fail to recognize that training. This can delay a veteran's transition into civilian life by requiring them to obtain redundant certifications which ...

I remember growing up in the 1980s and having my elders say things like, "Kids nowadays don't care about anything." After commenting on the apparent apathy of my peers, I would then be treated to a detailed recounting of epic protests against the Vietnam War, nuclear proliferation and segregation that took place in the 1960s and 70s.

Most local individuals would be far from alarmed to learn that a Maine woman recently announced her decision not to run for a fourth term as senator. In fact, there are few folks who devote enough attention to remember the names and term numbers of local politicians, let alone ones coming from the opposite end of the nation. However, it is not former Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe's leave of politics, but rather her reason behind the retirement, that should catch our attention.

Last year, Governor Jerry Brown signed SB x2, which requires California's utility districts to provide one-third of their total electricity from "renewable" sources by 2020. At the media event held for the signing of the more onerous Renewables Portfolio Standard program, the Governor and the bill's author, Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), spoke of how great this would be for California as a world leader.

February 24, 2012|
BY STATE SEN. ANTHONY CANNELLA (R-CERES)
|Editorial

This year, you and I will be asked to support a litany of tax measures. There's only one I plan to support: The continuation of the eighth-cent sales tax that fund the Stanislaus County library system until 2018.